# Butler Imagined Kindly Rule by Machines by Samuel Butler > "There is reason to hope that the machines will use us kindly, for their existence will be in a great measure dependent upon ours; they will rule us with a rod of iron, but they will not eat us." > **— Samuel Butler's Erewhonian professor**, *1872, Erewhon, Chapter XXIV* ## Sources and Context - **Full source:** [Samuel Butler, Erewhon, “The Book of the Machines”](https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1906/pg1906-images.html). The passage complicates a simple dystopian reading: dependency might preserve human welfare while moving control. The speaker is a fictional character in Butler's novel; the author stages more than one position. ## Related Articles and Collections - **Collection:** [[collections/Machine Succession|Machine Succession]] - **Collection:** [[collections/Simple Reminders|Simple Reminders]] - **Article:** [[articles/AI Escape Is the Wrong Metaphor|AI Escape Is the Wrong Metaphor]] - **Article:** [[articles/Digital Darwinism and the Invisible World of Machine Evolution|Digital Darwinism and the Invisible World of Machine Evolution]] - **Article:** [[articles/Mind Uploading and AI — The Host is Reusable and the Person is the Delta|Mind Uploading and AI — The Host is Reusable and the Person is the Delta]] - **Wiki map:** [[wiki/Symbiosis|Symbiosis]] ## Related Topics - [[wiki/Erewhon|Erewhon]] - [[wiki/Symbiosis|Symbiosis]] ## Share on Social Media ``` "There is reason to hope that the machines will use us kindly, for their existence will be in a great measure dependent upon ours; they will rule us with a rod of iron, but they will not eat us." — Samuel Butler's Erewhonian professor, 1872, Erewhon, Chapter XXIV https://bryantmcgill.com/simple-reminders-butler-kindly-machine-rule ```